Happy National Margarita Day!

I swear when I was planning this blog post, I did not realize that it coincided with National Margarita Day, but it was a happy coincidence indeed!

Recently, my husband and I spent our third wedding anniversary in San Antonio, TX and we had the *great* pleasure of staying at Hotel Emma. It definitely found its way into our top five hotel destinations we would recommend to anyone (although we didn’t totally love the city as a whole, the hotel made the trip well worth it). One of the things I took away from our stay at Hotel Emma was the simple gesture of offering all of their guests a welcome margarita in their beautiful library room. It was such a well-thought out and specific detail that ever since I got home, I’ve been contemplating copycatting it at home. As you all probably know by now if you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know that we love hosting our friends and family for all kinds of dinners, brunches, game nights, events, holidays and more. I love putting thought into everything we do and the idea of welcoming guests into our home with a craft, signature margarita was just too appealing to ignore. And so, here we are.

Because I am the way that I am, I didn’t just want to find a recipe on Pinterest or in a book. I wanted to put in the time and effort it took to really create something of our own. So, I set aside a full day to conduct what I called a “test kitchen” and had my bestie, Pooja (follow her on IG @aipooja), come over to help out since she’s a genius mastermind in the kitchen and makes anything so much more fun and entertaining.

My first step was to gather allll kinds of ingredients to play around with and I really spared nothing here. I got a heap of fun things to experiment with including: silver and gold tequila, earl grey simple syrup (homemade), cointreau, cassis bitters, juniper rose syrup, rosé, champagne, sauvignon blanc, elderflower cordial, elderflower rose lemonade, orange blossom water, pineapple chunks, a Buddha hand, lavender buds, cardamom, Topo Chico, club soda, honey from Uruguay, agave nectar, jalapeno, basil, mint, thyme, rosemary, molasses, lite coconut milk and a big pile of limes.

We literally spent all day listening to music and mixing up different concoctions with ingredients we thought would go well together. We mixed earl grey with gold tequila and lavender…coconut milk with herbs and agave…orange blossom water with broiled pineapples and Topo Chico…I think at the end of the day we had tried 8 or 9 recipes. To be honest, we lost count. Later in the day, we had another friend join us and started getting sidetracked with conversation, but I was still mixing up different things..just a little more leisurely.

That’s when it happened. I mixed up the right ingredients and immediately knew that this was the one…

BUT! My husband and I had plans that night to go see a play at a local small theater across the road from our neighborhood so it was time to end my experiment for the night.

But this morning after breakfast, my husband and I decided to mess around with the ingredients I put together to get the proportions down perfectly and firm up our recipe for our signature margarita. I’m so excited to have something that we put so much thought into that will be *the* staple margarita we serve to guests we welcome into our home.

Introducing the Maple Hollowrita!

Signature Maple Hollowrita – yields one serving, easy to multiply

Ingredients:

• 1/2 of one lime, juiced
• 1.5 oz. silver tequila
• 1.5 oz. elderflower rose lemonade
• 1 oz. sauvignon blanc
• two sprigs basil
• two sprigs mint
• Himalayan salt
• ice

Directions:

• Pour lime juice, tequila, lemonade and wine in a shaker
• Muddle the basil and mint in a Himalayan salt mortar and pestle if you have one. If not, muddle regularly and add to shaker along with a pinch of Himalayan salt
• Add handful of ice
• Shake vigorously and let set for about one minute to really let the herbs infuse the drink
• Pour over ice and serve!

So…who is coming over for a Hollowrita?!

XOXO, Thessali

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